The 12,1 million ETH staked on Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum's consensus layer, represents more than 10% of the cryptocurrency's current circulating supply.
Staking ether (ETH), Ethereum's native cryptocurrency, allows its holders to be validators of the new blockchain network built by developers under the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus.
Since the Beacon Chain was launched in December 2020, staking on the Ethereum consensus layer has grown 2.300%. Initially, the Beacon Chain, Ethereum 2.0's open source beacon chain, required 16.384 deposits and 524.288 ETH staked to launch. However, this threshold was far exceeded days before the first block of the beacon chain was mined.
Now Ethereum 2.0 has 12.172.559 ETH staked and 362.898 active validators, with an average balance of 33,5 ethers each, according to Beacon Chain data.
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The proximity of Ethereum 2.0 triggers ETH staking
With the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 closer to becoming a reality, the number of validator nodes operating on the new PoS network has significantly increased the amount of ethers deposited in staking.
Solo In the last week, the balance of ETH on the Beacon Chain increased 7,1%, going from 11,3 million ETH in staking last Monday, to 12,1 million ETH deposited in the network, currently.
Source: Beacon Chain
Staking consists of depositing and maintaining, or “staking,” cryptocurrencies in a PoS participation network with the objective of validating new blocks, reinforcing its security and stability, and generating rewards for it. Due to its characteristics, for many of the holders who stake their cryptocurrencies in different blockchain networks, this process is quite similar to the act of depositing money in traditional savings accounts.
In Ethereum 2.0, currently, holders of the cryptocurrency can deposit ETH to participate as validators in the network, but it is not possible to withdraw them once they have been deposited. According to the blockchain developers, Ethereum 2.0 could arrive between the end of this year and the beginning of 2023.
Over 10% of ETH supply staked
The 12,1 million ETH staked on the Ethereum 2.0 network represents 10,1% of all ether in circulation in the market. According to data from the cryptocurrency monitoring platform CoinMarketCap, the amount of ether available currently amounts to 120,6 million ETH.
On the other hand, blockchain analysis platform Nansen shows that much of Ethereum 2.0 staking is being done through Lido, a protocol that allows its users to stake cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Solana, Terra, among others. According to Nansen, almost 3,7 million ethers are staked through this protocol.
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